just a stupid zombie flick....

Rating: Null/10 (1 December 2002)

This movie is quite popular in Britain, mainly on behalf of its director. Take out the fame factor or the Brit factor and all you're left with is yet another stupid zombie movie.
Let's look at the ingredients: * totally whacked out explanation? Check. A disease that turns people from human to monster in 10 seconds is just as ridiculous as any other explanation ever given
* gory violence? Check and double check and triple check. Blood vomitting, machete-chopping, eyepopping violence galore.
* a few (ill-defined) characters fighting against an army of monsters? Sure.

* high body count? Check

* predictable? Check
* you can see who will survive a mile off? Check.

So, how does it compare with Night of the Living Dead, Resident Evil, From Dusk Till Dawn and other such stuff? It comes out halfway between NoftLD and Dusk till Dawn. The zombies have speed, and that's their main difference from other zombies (turning them, effectively, into something halfway between zombies and vampires).
There are a few things that irk me, though. For example, the visual style may appeal to some, but to me it just completely ruined the movie. Ultra fast cuts, grainy, colour-deflated pictures, and a disappointing "made for TV" feel do not make a good visual experience, in my opinion. If this is digital video, and judging the technology by "Hotel" and "Centre of the World" for comparison, then it's clear that it is just a fad of the moment with no future. Perhaps digital cinematography is capable of brilliance (Attack of the Clones), but currently, it simply seems to be a sorry excuse for using cheap cameras to get a result of slightly-better-than-TV picture quality, but with little appeal to the eye on a cinema screen. Give me back traditional cinema cameras any day...
Then there's the music, which in at least two scenes starts out quietly only to drone on until it is unbearably noisy, and totally, totally out of place. (Well, in the climactic slaughtering it's less out of place than in the first few scenes).
And on the predictability issue, I challenge anyone to claim they could not see the hidden motives of the soldiers from the first moment they appeared... It was quite obvious indeed.
All in all, something for zombie movie fans, but just cinematic junk for most others. Might be bearable on a small screen.
3/10